Palantir’s Western supremacist empire is reaching all corners of the globe, as Australian Sen. David Shoebridge explains to CN Live!
Guest: Sen. David Shoebridge. Interviewers: Cathy Vogan and Elizabeth Vos. Producer: Cathy Vogan. Time: 35:12.
Palantir Technologies is an American company that handles and analyses big data for various governments, intelligence agencies, law enforcement and corporate entities.
They have included J.P. Morgan, various hedge funds, News Corp and Bank of America. Founded in 2003 as a private entity, Palantir nevertheless spent the first six years of its life within the C.I.A., which then became its principal client.
The 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution forbids the government from spying on its own citizens without a warrant. Post 9/11, the government wanted to conduct surveillance on the entire American population, ostensibly to find terrorists. Using a private entity was a way to get around the constitutional obstacle, but after Palantir left the mothership its techs would return to Langley every two weeks to stay in touch.
In its early days, Palantir’s business was to track digital footprints, detect patterns and predict what people of interest might do next. That business evolved into increasingly controversial activity such as predictive policing, targeting early candidates for COVID vaccines, ICE deportations and AI assisted bombing by the U.S. military and the Israel Defense Force.
More recently Palantir has secured contracts with allied foreign governments, handling sensitive data for the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) and Australia’s Department of Defence.
In 2014 Palantir was valued at $5-6 billion dollars. Since going public in 2020, its value has risen to $370 to $375 billion on the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange). With such a picture of success, with its investors and calibre of clients, one might ask what could possibly go wrong?
Public trust in Palantir has plummeted at various stages: when petty criminals were targeted rather than terrorists; when the wrong people were seized by ICE; when 175 Iranian schoolgirls were killed using Palantir Maven software; when the company this month published a manifesto declaring that some cultures are dysfunctional and regressive; and when it became clear that there would be a backdoor for Palantir to access the sensitive data of Brits and Australians if government users followed the instructions in the manuals they were given.
CN Live! speaks about Palantir with Australian Senator David Shoebridge, who holds the shadow portfolios for the Australian Greens of justice, security, digital rights and foreign policy.
